[rhyds]

The Labour industrial policy of the 60s and 70s was basically this:

Take an industry, in this case car making (but the same applied to IT, aerospace and others) and "encourage" various firms in that industry to merge to become one large company. In our case BMC (who owned Austin, Morris, MG, Wolsley, Riley and built some tractors and light vans and were racking up serious losses) were "encouraged" to merge with Leyland Motors, who at the time were making profits selling trucks and busses around the world, to create British Leyland.

The idea was that these British "super firms" would be more able to compete internationally than individual firms. However, what happened was that unlike the hostile takeovers that had created BMC and Leyland in the first place, there was no competitive drive to push the company in to developing better products. British Leyland knew it didn't have to build world beating trucks and busses as the government (through local bus companies and nationalised haulage businesses) would always buy whatever it built.

This loss of competitiveness caused serious operational issues, with money from profitable parts of the business being used to shore up loss making divisions, because pulling out of those areas of business and closing factories was politically impossible.

Also, your average Red Robbo knew that strikes would always lead to what they were asking for, because the Government had, essentially, a bottomless pit of money and didn't want to lose political points.

However the worst idea was that of Tony Benn, who decided that the Unions should be given a direct say in how British Leyland was run. The problem was that while Ford considered itself in business to make money by making cars, BL, according to the unions, was there to provide employment, and profitability was not a pressing concern...